Justus (7 page)

His hand slowly crept down
her stomach and stopped at her jeans.

All other thought became
focused on that hand and its intended path. She knew what he
wanted. That he was asking permission. If she granted it, Paige
wasn’t sure there was going to be any way of coming back from
this.

He leaned forward and nibbled
on her earlobe.

“I want to touch you,” he
growled.

She shuddered at his words.
So clear and firm.

“I…”

“Let me touch you, Paige,” he
whispered. “Let me watch you come undone.”

Her breath came out in hot
little puffs as he continued to nuzzle her neck.

“I…” she stammered.

Her leg knocked the needles
to the floor, scattering them. The sound snapped her back into the
cold reality of the situation.

“I need to go to the store,”
she said and climbed quickly off the bed.

Fast as she could manage,
Paige grabbed the pieces from the floor, trying her best to not
look at the very large tent he had made with the middle of his
body.

Everything about this was not
a good idea. She planned on keeping her distance from the extremely
sexy hybrid until he recovered.

She hurried over to the door
and looked back at him.

“I’ll be back soon,” she
said, still not looking at him. “You should get some rest.”

He narrowed his eyes, his
only other response a disappointed grunt.

With that she was out the
door.

Chapter Nine

Paige sucked in deep
breaths and tried to calm her pounding heart. She could still feel
his rough calloused hands on her body and ached to have him touch
her again. Everything about the idea felt so right, so natural, as
if she’d finally encountered fresh air after years in a stuffy
closet.

She shook her head. Now
wasn’t the time to be thinking about that sort of thing. Justus was
a man on the run from a lot of different people. It wasn’t like
there could be much of anything for them, and she wasn’t interested
in anything casual, even with someone with as magnificent a body as
Justus. Besides, she had her own problems to deal with.

The sounds of crunching
gravel made her frown. It wasn’t often that she got visitors, and
even less often she didn’t know who it was. She prayed it was
Titus. Though she didn’t want the Luna Lodge hybrids to lock Justus
up again, at least their leader would be reasonable. Weird locals
might shoot them both.

She glanced back to the door
to her sister’s room.

“Stay out of sight,” she said
to the door, knowing he could hear her perfectly on the other
side.

Paige hurried to gather
anything that might show that someone else had been there. She
tossed the used needles in the trash and placed the plates in the
sink. Someone could still draw conclusions from them, so she’d just
have to make sure to distract them.

She stepped over to the door
and opened it.

Paige watched through the
storm door as two trucks and a car pulled out front. She narrowed
her eyes. The older-looking vehicles didn’t look like anything
she’d seen at Luna Lodge.

She glanced over to her side
where her shotgun sat from the other night. Not that she wanted to
use it, but if she needed to, she wanted to know it was close. She
definitely wasn’t going to go down without a fight.

“Can I help you?” she asked
as she opened the glass door.

Two men in camouflaged
jackets stepped out of their trucks, equally battered Ford F150s.
They were large for locals, but not huge compared to Justus.

A few other men filed out of
the trucks. She recognized a few people from town and sighed. The
first two men stepped forward.

“You Paige Blake?” one of
them, a middle-aged man, asked.

She frowned at him.

“Who the hell are you?”

“We just want to talk,” the
other man said, sliding his coat to the side, revealing a
pistol.

Paige reached inside and
picked up her shotgun.

“Maybe I like to even the
playing field when I talk,” she said. “Now get off my property
before I call the sheriff.”

The two men laughed, and the
way they did made it clear who the sheriff would back. If these
weren’t the men who shot at Justus in the woods, she’d be
surprised.

A tall man slid from the
passenger side of the sedan. Scarred and warped skin covered half
his face in rough, uneven patches. His ear had shriveled on one
side, and she wondered if he could even hear out of it.

She’d seen this before. The
burn unit was one of the hardest to be in. The people there were in
constant pain as if the flame from the fire continued to burn long
after it was gone.

It made sense. All those
nerves became exposed to grow new skin. It made the nerves raw and
new. The skin was sensitive, and even something as soft as a baby’s
touch would cause pain. It was why many were heavily sedated.

She could tell by the color
of the man’s scars he hadn’t been healing for much over a year. The
pain probably still haunted him late at night when no one was
around to take his mind off it.

“Now, boys,” the man said,
his voice clear with a slight southern drawl. “No need to scare the
lady. After all,” he said with a smile that made her skin crawl,
“we just want to talk, make more friends.”

The men looked down as if
they had been scolded by a parent rather than a grown man.

“Yes, Reverend John,” one
said.

Paige raised a brow. She’d
heard that name before at Luna Lodge. The man had made it his
personal holy crusade to bring down the hybrids. He also was
supposed to be dead from what she’d overheard. She barely
suppressed a shudder.

“Now, Paige, may I come in?”
he asked.

The question was loaded, and
she knew it. He didn’t just want to come it; he wanted to search
her place and make sure she wasn’t harboring anyone. All she could
do was hope Justus kept quiet until this was over. If it was just
John, she might be able to handle him, but she was no hybrid able
to take on multiple men. Even with her gun, she’d be shot dead in
seconds.

She gave a quick nod.

“But your…” She glanced to
the other men. “Your associates stay outside.”

The larger of the two men
glared at her and opened his mouth to say something but was cut off
by his leader.

“Very well,” Reverend John
said. “Tom and Frank, you stand outside. Everyone else get back in
the trucks. This won’t take long.”

The gathered men stared
daggers at her but complied with the request.

Paige held the door open for
Reverend John as he brushed past her.

He looked around her small
living room and gave a little smile.

“What a sweet little place,”
he said and walked over to the couch.

Paige nodded for him to have
a seat. She stepped over to the chair near her and placed the large
gun over her lap. Just a little reminder that she wasn’t going to
be pushed around.

“Thank you,” she said
stiffly. “What brings you here, Reverend?”

He gave a wide grin. “Please
call me John. That’s just a nickname the boys came up with.”

Paige nodded at the false
modesty. It only made her more suspicious of him.

“Now, we know that you are
associated with those…” His face wrinkled in distaste.
“…creatures.”

In one line, he had summed up
why he was there.

“I am no longer employed at
Luna Lodge,” she said firmly. “I left after one of the recent
incidents.”

John smiled. The burned side
of his head lifted slightly, trying to make the skin move like the
other side. He cleared his throat loudly and turned so his burns
were less visible.

“Yes, well, we’ve heard that
their leader stopped by the other day.”

Paige narrowed her eyes at
the man.

“Are you stalking me?”

He gave a loud laugh and
leaned back on the couch, making himself far more comfortable than
he should.

“We like to keep an eye on
the good people of this town.” He smiled at her again. “For their
own safety.”

He leaned forward, as if
telling her a secret. The act of forced intimacy made her shiver a
little.

A faint grin appeared on his
face. “They are tools of wickedness, evil and sin. They bring death
with them.” He tapped his heart. “This is why you left. You
realized that. You witnessed their depravity.”

She swallowed, resisting the
urge to blurt out a defense of Luna Lodge. There would be no
reasoning with this man, only stalling and misdirection.

“It was dangerous, so I
left,” she said quietly. “I don’t want to be around that sort of
violence.”

“Exactly. No good
human
does.” He let out a labored sigh. “My men encountered
one of those abominations in the forest. It was feral and charged
at them with its claws held high as if to kill them where they
stood.”

It took all her self-control
not to roll her eyes. Claws?

He reached his hand in the
air to act as the supposed claw. “Luckily, they were able to wound
the creature. Otherwise, it probably would have gutted and ate
them.” He clucked his tongue. “But it still got away. Don’t worry
though. We’ll find it. We almost have. Its tracks were found not
far from here.”

Paige gripped the gun in her
hand to keep from slapping him. Not only were these men full of
shit, but they were going door to door trying to scare people into
cooperating.

“What will you do when he’s
found?” she said.

John seemed surprised by her
question.

“He’ll face judgment of
course,” he said simply.

Paige felt bile rise in her
throat. It was unlikely the judgment he spoke of would be in
court.

“In this time of darkness,
when the Devil’s spawn walks among us, men of good character need
to stand up and protect those who can’t protect themselves.”

“I can protect myself,” she
said, patting her gun.

He chuckled. “My men were
lucky, and they were ready for one of those creatures. You won’t
be.”

John stood suddenly and
pulled a card from his pocket. He scrawled something on the back
and held it out to her. Paige stood and took the card.

“Here’s my card,” he said and
flipped it over. “And this is my personal line. You call if you see
anything. The wounded one’s black and has a mostly shaved head from
what my men said, but if you see any of them outside their little
camp, feel free to let us know. Also, if you need anything else,
let me know.”

His fingers lingered on hers
as he handed over the card. She felt her stomach lurch at the
suggestion she might be interested in an insane bigot like him.

John walked to the door, and
she followed close behind, gun still in hand. When he’d reached the
door, John stopped and turned to stare at her.

“You know, I’m friends with a
number of higher-ups at the hospital,” he said slyly. “Maybe I
could put in a good word for you. Just something to keep in mind.
We humans have to stick together against those creatures, after
all.”

She nodded, all the while a
wide variety of curse words echoed in her head.

“Thank you for your concern,”
she said and gave a smile that couldn’t have reached her eyes.

He stared at her for a long
moment before bringing a finger up to skim along her cheek.

“Keep my offer in mind,” he
said then turned to walk out the door. “Don’t worry. We’ll keep an
eye on you. In these times of darkness, good men must stand vigil.
And darkness cannot stand before the light.”

She watched as the men all
loaded into their vehicles. Several glared at her, probably
convinced she was a succubus doing the Devil’s work. She gritted
her teeth as she thought the only people doing the Devil’s work
were Reverend John and his men.

As they drove down the long
dirt drive, she sighed and slumped against the doorframe.

Chapter Ten

Justus had been waiting
in the room, earlier slipping on his pants in case he needed to
run. With his recovery well underway, he’d easily be able to
escape, but he didn’t like the idea of John both threatening and
flirting with Paige.

Anger at the bastard in the
living room only increased as John’s sickeningly sweet desire for
Paige seeped through the walls and made his skin crawl. There was
no way in hell that bastard was getting his hands on her. He’d rip
him limb from limb.

He took several deep breaths
as the conversation unfolded. Every instinct in him screamed to
protect Paige and take out the men, but the rational part of him
recognized she was defusing the situation for the moment. Whatever
happened, this time he was ready and wouldn’t be surprised.

As soon as the last car made
its way from the drive and onto the road, Justus burst through the
door.

He could still smell John’s
disgusting lust hanging thick in the air.

“That son of a bitch,” he
said as he stalked over to where Paige stood, her back to the front
door. He made a fist. “And feral? I tried to talk to those
bastards, but they shot me. Claws my ass. Maybe I should show him
my claws.”

Paige placed a hand on his
chest.

“That wouldn’t solve
anything,” she said softly. “The important thing is they obviously
don’t know you are in the house. If they really thought that, they
would have stormed the place.”

Rage coursed through him as
he paced the room. He knew killing John would probably only make
things worse, but he had to do something. He couldn’t just sit
there, hiding, while his woman had to suffer on her own. If he’d
been more careful, he wouldn’t have been wounded by John’s men to
begin with and brought the trouble to his woman’s door.

Justus paused. His woman? He
couldn’t shake it though. She was. Everything about her was his. He
could smell it and knew that his instincts wouldn’t lie to him. His
woman. His Vestal. His destiny.